7 Days in Entebbe is a […] ticktock of the 1976 hijacking of an Air France jetliner en route from Tel Aviv to Paris by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Red Army Faction, a German leftist group. […] [It] would be conventional, were it not for the fact that the movie opens with a startling snippet of a performance by Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company […].

And then the movie, by director José Padilha, [cuts] to the hijacking, which brought more than 200 passengers, including 84 Israelis, to Uganda’s Entebbe Airport. […] [T]he fact-based drama […] follows the week-long showdown between the hijackers, including Germany’s Brigitte Kuhlmann and Wilfried Böse (Rosamund Pike and Daniel Brühl), and the Israeli government. Infighting – among hijackers over strategy, and between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (a marvelous Lior Ashkenazi) and Defense Minister Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan) over whether to negotiate – lends drama to the standoff.
[T]he dance’s themes of conformity and deviation resonate powerfully with the movie’s true theme, which questions whether Israel’s robotic stance of non-negotiation has been effective, in the long run. If the nation never talks with its enemies, Rabin asks Peres, how can there ever be peace?